19 Comments so far

1. Robert Brantley on December 22, 2004 9:08 am

   John Combest only wishes someone would plagiarize his right of center news content.

   Visit http://missourileadership.com/MissouriLeadership/News/index.htm and get the real deal.

2. Cynthia McNiel on December 22, 2004 10:26 am

   MissouriLeadership.com looks like a positive news roundup for political progresives, and I am not sure it is possible to plagiarize a news link. Cheers! Cynthia McNiel

3. John Combest on December 22, 2004 10:33 am

   Robert,

   You are hilarious. Seriously.

   Just as I sit here typing that very sentence, another e-mail comes in from “a lifelong yellow dog Democrat” that says “this guy” (you, Robert Brantley) is “an embarrassment.”

   In the blogging community, there is one rule: don’t steal other people’s content, then pass it off as your own.

   And to think: All you had to do was admit you made a mistake and apologize.

   Your 15 seconds are up, but your reputation as a plagiarist, a liar, and an imbecile (as one of your fellow Springfield Democrats called you yesterday) will live forever in my screen caps of your website, in the google.com cache, and in the minds of Missouri’s political professionals of both parties.

   Your time is up. Goodbye.

4. Cynthia McNiel on December 22, 2004 10:37 am

   Missouri Leadership.com offers a positive news roundup for Missourians. I am unclear on how it is possible to plagiarize a newslink. You may join a progressive discussion about the articles at the Missouri discussion group link posted on the homepage of http://www.modatkc.com. Cheers! Cynthia McNiel

5. Cynthia McNiel on December 22, 2004 10:40 am

   MissouriLeadership.com offers a positive news
   roundup for Missourians. To join a progressive
   discussion of the news articles, use the Missouri
   Discussion Group link on the homepage of
   http://www.modatkc.com. Cheers! Cynthia McNiel

6. Jim Swift on December 22, 2004 10:56 am

   Cynthia,
   How can you with good conscience support a thief? Shame on “Missouri Leadership” for being unoriginal in their content, oh I mean stealing it. Someone with any sense would at least switch the order of the articles and maybe add/delete a few to make it look legit.

   Shame on you,

   Jim Swift

7. BlogKC on December 22, 2004 11:50 am

   Cynthia, while the links themselves cannot be plagiarized, Combest’s presentation of these can be. The people running Missouri leadership can provide the same links, but they need to type up the list themselves, not copy and paste it wholesale. At the very least they need to provide attribution, some like “this list of headlines comes from johncombest.com”

8. Paul Schmidt on December 22, 2004 12:02 pm

   It�s incredible that this guy rips JohnCombest.com off and has the nerve to act indignant. This is likely a valuable peek into this fellow�s soul (maybe a view into that of his defender as well?). Not to mention that you�ve blown his cover and revealed that his sight has a conservative bend…..scandalous!

   Just a note, why can�t you just say LIBERAL, progressive really doesn�t fit.

9. Caleb Harris on December 23, 2004 2:25 am

   Robert c’mon now….I know both you and John (although only John in phone calls and emails) and as a longtime journalist he has every right to be insulted that you lazily use his weblink descriptions as your own…it is NOT mere coincedence that they are they same day after day after all. Although I RARELY agree with you on issues and beliefs Robert I also know that you have enough intelligence to come up with your own decriptions…using Johns decriptions only help our Conservative causes…so in reality I have to give you a BIG thanks Robert…have a nice day and God bless…ciao

10. Caleb Harris on December 23, 2004 3:22 am

    Good lord… trying to type after an 11 hour road trip is more difficult then I thought it would be …sorry for all the mistakes from the above post…but you get my “drift” so to speak.

11. Zen Walt on December 23, 2004 7:50 am

    I guess the best thing we can do is go to the source.
    visit:

    http://www.Johncombest.com

    (copy paste the link in your browser if link doesn’t work automatically - Contrary to popular opinion to copy paste is not to plagiarize.)

    then visit:

    http://www.missourileadership.com/MissouriLeadership/News/index.htm

    It Appears that JohnCombest copy/pastes headline links from the political right and posts them daily. It Appears that MissouriLeadership.com copy/pastes headline links from a nonpartisan standpoint and seperates them by category.

    Don’t be a John Holmes Jon Combest.

12. Joe on December 23, 2004 11:42 am

    I used to visit Johncombest.com about once a week to see what was happening. I always thought that his news presentation seemed slightly slanted to the right but his was the only source I had found that covered the state of Missouri.

    When checking in today, I discovered that he posted a link to his site stats which reflect he has lost 33% of his traffic over the last three months.

    http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.johncombest.com

    With the partisan attacks that he now openly flaunts on his web and the lopsided presentation of Missouri Political News� it is no wonder he has been losing viewership.

    Thanks John for pointing out over the last few days that there are other sources of information to get political news from like:

    http://www.missourireview.org
    http://www.mdn.org/index.htm
    http://www.topix.net/state/mo

13. BlogKC on December 23, 2004 1:18 pm

    We have several conservative and liberal news sources listed here on BlogKC… http://blogkc.com/archives/political-sources/

14. Todd Elkins on December 23, 2004 1:21 pm

    Having looking at the “Missouri Leadership” site when it still had John Combest’s link verbatim, I don’t know if they were cut-and-pasted. It looked to me that he used frames to include John’s website within his own and try to pass it off as an integrated part of the site. To cut-and-paste would actually require work to be done each done. No matter what the technique, John has a right to be angry and the work should have been attributed.

    I do remember several years ago a number of news organizations were claiming that any links to their site violated their copyright. So I think we also need to acknowledge some fluidity to the debate.

15. MissouriLeadership.com on December 23, 2004 7:02 pm

    MissouriLeadership.com is frames driven. A template reflecting a very basic news delivery page was identified at johncombest.com. Johncombest.com was temporarily mirrored in the Political News section of MissouriLeadership.com to assist in site construction.

    A volunteer publicly released a link to the Political News Section (http://missourileadership.com/MissouriLeadership/News/index.htm) before construction was complete. Missourileadership.com is volunteer driven. Volunteers are able to log into the info@MissouriLeadership mailbox account to respond to inquiries or perform outreach activities.

    MissouriLeadership.com extends an open apology to johncombest.com.

16. Todd Elkins on December 23, 2004 11:03 pm

    I didn’t know that a website could apologize! Ok, I don’t want to keep kicking the people at http://www.missourileadership.com, but this is kind of a non-apology. A mistake by a volunteer? No personal acceptence of responsibility.

17. Derek White on January 21, 2005 1:42 am

    missourileadership.com rocks!! I could careless about John Combest!! to be honest news is news and they are both providing links to it. If John has a problem then grow a pair and say something to Rob. Other than that Moleadership rocks!!! John Combs licks my you know what.

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